About the Game
The latest game in the popular Majesty series, Warlock: Master of the Arcane introduces turned-based strategy and global conquest to the fantastic world of Ardania. In a time of chaotic upheaval, the player takes the role of a great mage, a warlord vying for ultimate power. Your mission is to build an empire, expand your borders, research new spells and conquer your enemies. Become the ultimate Warlock and rule over all of Ardania!

I just played the demo and was really surprised by it. Anyone disappointed by elemental war of magic should be pretty happy with this one. Basically if you like civ or better master of magic, you're probable gonna like this. The demo was a lot of fun but their is a turn limit, so your not gonna play a full game. I really recommend trying the demo, I've really heard nothing about this before so it's a real pleasant surprise.

*First catch all sort of thread for me, tell me if I should change anything or if I'm not supposed to do this yet.

Actually quite excited about this game. I had no expectations when trying the demo but now I think it's the game that Elemental should have been. This is much more a spiritual successor to Master of Magic.

I'm weak. I was probably going to buy it anyway, but I thought even with some UI/info ackwardness, and some lack of polish, that I could easily get $20 worth of fun just from what I experienced in the demo.

Looking forward to come campaign reports, and I maybe eager enough to do one of my own. I swear I don't have my fingers crossed.

I was on the fence with this game. I went from really wanting it, to be willing to wait for it, to really wanting it. I tried the demo and liked what I played of it, though I'm looking forward to being able to start a game from scratch. I buy so many games that I don't play right away that usually I'm just better off waiting for a sale, but I know I'll be playing this one, so I preordered

Is it just me, or does this game take like 3 minutes of blank screen before it fires up? I have a fairly robust system that can play anything at max settings (except maybe top shooters? I don't play shooters), but even the demo I would click and have to wait a couple minutes of nothing before it started; I was hoping it was just an early build issue. This certainly reminds me of the Civ 5 engine even if they didn't use it except even slower to start; that's one part they could have left off. Runs fine once it starts, but it sure takes its sweet time getting there.

o some buildings don't seem to work - I built a forge but none of my units gained the perk that came with the building

Once you build the building an upward arrow appears on those units for whom the perk can apply. Clicking the arrow displays a list of available perks and their cost. Choosing one applies the perk and the cost. Another great way for unit differentiation.

Do you go for a few experienced and highly perked units or go for more "cannon fodder"? Brilliant!

Any tips I was trying to play as the undead but it kept feeling like the battles were turning into a slog. I'm not sure if I was unlucky or something but I'd run into those huge elemantals and it would take my entire army to fight one. That being said the flying battleships are awesome, I always keep tons of those.

Haven't played long enough to state authoritatively, but in specific regards to the greater fire elementals, I found so far that imps do surprisingly well against them. They aren't going to last, but they do decent damage, can get in 2 attacks if they're not the one targeted after their first, and they're cheap and quick to summon. With a couple warriors around to absorb a hit or two the imps have seemed like the easiest way I've found so far to deal with GFEs.

edit: and I'm too lazy to read the manual and assume the info I want isn't in there anyway, so anyone know how resistances work? I hit a GFE with a shadow bolt (24 death magic), and it did a critical hit, and did exactly 0 damage. I would expect immunity to fire, not death, by all the standard fantasy tropes there.

Haven't played long enough to state authoritatively, but in specific regards to the greater fire elementals, I found so far that imps do surprisingly well against them. They aren't going to last, but they do decent damage, can get in 2 attacks if they're not the one targeted after their first, and they're cheap and quick to summon. With a couple warriors around to absorb a hit or two the imps have seemed like the easiest way I've found so far to deal with GFEs.

edit: and I'm too lazy to read the manual and assume the info I want isn't in there anyway, so anyone know how resistances work? I hit a GFE with a shadow bolt (24 death magic), and it did a critical hit, and did exactly 0 damage. I would expect immunity to fire, not death, by all the standard fantasy tropes there.

I love this game. Thus far my favorite thing has been discovering that you sometimes get special units when you wipe an NPC den. At first I got a healing shaman, which I'm sure would be super useful if my spec wasn't already heal + def. After the shaman though...

Your eyes do not deceive you. That's a flying ghost ship. That seiges. So cool.

My only major qualm is the lack of information given to the player. Sure they give you combat outcome, but how much does x terrain effect my units? Is city population just measured by time, or do other things contribute?

"Duke Nukem Forever's switch from Quake II to Unreal technology took six weeks, but it will ultimately save months of development time."
@Holysh*tMatt

Haven't played long enough to state authoritatively, but in specific regards to the greater fire elementals, I found so far that imps do surprisingly well against them. They aren't going to last, but they do decent damage, can get in 2 attacks if they're not the one targeted after their first, and they're cheap and quick to summon. With a couple warriors around to absorb a hit or two the imps have seemed like the easiest way I've found so far to deal with GFEs.

edit: and I'm too lazy to read the manual and assume the info I want isn't in there anyway, so anyone know how resistances work? I hit a GFE with a shadow bolt (24 death magic), and it did a critical hit, and did exactly 0 damage. I would expect immunity to fire, not death, by all the standard fantasy tropes there.

If you pull up the detailed information on the unit (possibly right click?) it has a list of their resistances, special abilities etc.

Yea, finally spotted that, I'm a bit obtuse at times. I've now found everything I think I need except what determines base population growth (if there's anything you can do to control it other than the prosperity spell I think it was called) and where the heck the Avatar of a god spawns since I've reached maxed out rep with Helia and can't win this game till I find Lunord's stupid Avatar. Gods shouldn't hide!

Yeah, this game is awesome. I haven't been hit with One More Turn Syndrome in a long time but I purposefully skipped treadmill and then my girlfriend went to a movie with a friend. Played from about 6pm till 11pm and could have easily kept going if I didn't force myself to go to bed. I'm really amazed they chose to price this at only $20. I would have easily paid twice that and not felt ripped off, though I haven't even completed my first game yet. I supposedly started with a large map but it doesn't feel really big is my only complaint. That and the fact that the AI factions refuse to ever take a non-aggression pact and often demand huge tributes from you, even when they're clearly substantially weaker than me. One AI on another island demanded I give him basically all my gold and though I refused and he declared war like 15 turns ago, he hasn't come near my territory. I'm sure Ino-Co Plus will improve all this going forward though.

It's a bee-ta, not a bay-ta.
People get pissed off, not pissed.
They're mine-o-taurs, not min-o-taurs.

His constant use of Americanisms (as well as his "I'm smug because I have memorised all of the special rules for every revision of the Dark Eldar" voice, which just can't be natural) just make me picture someone who has never left his bedroom in his mum's house and has therefore only ever spoken to Americans in his life (presumably in the late hours on Pepsi-fuelled raids or some such).

This wouldn't usually be an issue, but I find his videos hard to watch because of it. Again, it wouldn't be an issue, but they actually seem damn good. I wish they didn't make my skin crawl, but I feel like I can smell the leather of his Matrix Coat over YouTube, and it really puts me off.

I supposedly started with a large map but it doesn't feel really big is my only complaint.

I felt the exact opposite; I started with whatever the starting settings were, presumably a normal sized map, but was able to lay down so many cities that it's ridiculous. I haven't bothered going to any of the 3 outer worlds and I must have 30+ cities on the map; assuming the outer worlds are the same size that'd be 120 cities to manage and I've already hit the point where I'm just randomly selecting a building rather than paying attention. I just don't want it to be any bigger at all. I think I'm going with a small map and more opponents next time.

Couple of niggles - unless i accidentally skipped it, there doesn't seem to be any sort of end-game summary screen. It just has little epilogue dialogue and then goes to credits. Seems a bit of an odd ommission for this style of game.

Also diplomacy options seem extremely thin on the grounds.

Other than that though, just finished a trial game on a small, easy, world and very much enjoyed it.

After having played this pretty much non stop last night, I have to say it definitely has that one-more-turn thing going for it. However, I have already run into some questionable moves by the strategic AI. Some things make sense, like mages who are much less powerful than me being nice to me and offering non-aggression treaties and alliances along with tributes. However, I did have one mage demand pretty much all my gold and go to war after, even though he was nowhere near me and was struggling with fighting off creatures.

I'm looking forward to what changes they can make, but I am very concerned that they are putting all their effort into multiplayer (which will supposedly be the first patch), and the answer to weak AI will be "play against a human." Which I have no interest in doing in this kind of game.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun as it stands, the tactical AI seems to be in good shape as Tom Chick mentioned, and hopefully the high level AI will improve.

Reading the Paradox Warlock forums has been instructive.

Oh, and the Paradox Warlock Beginner's Guide is invaluable. It has a lot of the most basic basics - I think it assumes no familiarity with turn based strategy. However, I did learn a few things there that I hadn't figured out on my own - for example: towns you take over (or found with settlers that are not of your race) will grow more slowly and accumulate resources more slowly than towns you found with your own settlers. I was hoping that snagging some Undead towns would help me with better mana generation, but apparently, not so much.

The game manual is hopeless. The one downloadable from Paradox is better than the one that comes in the Steam install directory, but only in that it doesn't have placeholders and cyrillic text in it.

Most Played | Become the headshot you want to see in the world. —oilypenguin

I just won my first game and it was really fun. I stopped trying to play undead and went human instead and it turns out the higher tier human units are beastly. Deck them out with upgrades and lots of levels and they can be scary strong. By the end of the game I had three units waging war against a fraction by themselves. And one city that was under constant attack by multiple ogres and wolves was defended by a single unit.

Tactical the ai is quite good and always keeps mean on my toes for battle. It was really interesting to see a three way standoff of near my borders. That's exactly how it should be. That said it's not very good at the high level stuff. That three way standoff didn't matter so much because my opponent let me surround his capital with my troops while we were at peace (still was a tough fight but the default open borders are rather silly).

Also the maps seem way to big and it seems like you get way too many cities. I played a normal map and I end with 30 cities or so. When I checked out the other two worlds and realized you could build cities in there as well...
That being said it was a lot of fun, just make sure to play on the smaller maps, otherwise it'll be a huge grind.